10 Strange Facts You Need to Know About Taylor Swift & More

By Jordan Hicks on 2016-12-10

Listen to her songs and you know more about her love life than perhaps even her boyfriends did, but how much do you know about the lady herself? Follow me on a short review of some secret facts about Taylor Swift.

Listen to her songs and you know more about her love life than perhaps even her boyfriends did, but how much do you know about the lady herself? Perhaps you know she’s a loved musician, an awarded writer and producer, but do you know her first job? Details about her family? How her fears or influences? Or even how many awards she’s got? Well keep reading cause below you’ll find the answers to all these and more you might not have expected.

1. Reason for the NameTaylor Swift got her name from her mother, who apparently believed her daughter was to have a future in business and wanted it to be unclear from the card whether Taylor was a male and female, thereby giving her a leg-up on anyone she had not already met in person.

2. Her Grandmother’s ProfessionTaylor isn’t the only talent in the family. Her mother’s mother, Majorie Finlay was an accomplished opera singer and apparently where Taylor gets her good looks as well. They could easily be sisters looking at images of them at the same age. “I can remember her singing, the thrill of it,” Swift said. “She was one of my first inspirations.The people around me provided all the inspiration I needed. Everything I wrote (at that time) came from that experience, what I observed happening around me.”

3. Dad’s Business AcumenMaybe her mom thought she would go into business because Taylor’s father was a businessman already. Her dad, whom isn’t often seen in the the Taylor media, is apparently the more whimsical dreamer between Taylor’s parents. He was so sure of his daughter’s talent that he became an early investor in her record company, Big Machine Records, purchasing three percent of the company. Scott Brochette, the label’s head finds Scott Swift very supportive, but adds that it was purely Taylor’s talent that resulted in her success, in case anyone chose to think otherwise.

4. Taylor’s First Job Involved BugsScott Swift’s business is where Taylor had her first job, it helped that they lived there too. The Swift family owns a Christmas tree farm in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania and Taylor, being too small to help secure trees to the roofs of cars was placed in charge of knocking the praying mantis pods out of the trees before loading. "I forgot to check one time and they hatched all over these people’s house. And there were hundreds of thousands of them," Swift told Jay Leno in 2008. "And they had little kids, and they couldn’t kill them because that’d be a bad Christmas.”

5. Competitive JockeyYou read that right. Taylor’s family also owned a shetland pony and several quarter horses and she learned English Riding as a child. She even competed in horse shows and riding competitions.

6. Love of ReadingApparently Taylor shares more than her dreamer mentality with her father, its possible he is also the root of her love of reading. Swift enjoyed the works of Shel Silverstein and Dr. Seuss growing but has since taken a fondness for mysteries in recent years. Her favorites are Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. She remains a fan of anything written from a child’s perspective as well, but has listed her favorite books as To Kill a Mocking Bird and The Hunger Games series. She must have been very excited to have two of her songs features in the 2012 film adaptation; “Safe & Sound” and “Eyes Open.”

7. Poetry AwardTaylor isn’t just a bibliophile, she’s a writer as well. She writes about boys mostly in songs, but she’s also a poet. In the fourth grade, she wrote a poem titled “Monster in My Closet” that won a national poetry competition. “There’s a monster in my closet and I don’t know what to do / Have you ever seen him? / Has he ever pounced on you?” You can see the beginnings of her lyrical style in the works here, where later the monster would be a man she warned women to stay away from.

8. BiographyTaylor has written more lengthy works as well. Including spending an entire summer at the age of 12 writing a 350-page novel which has yet to see the light of day. She says its finished and ready for print, but has yet to indicate an intent to publish it. She has indicated that one day she intends to write an autobiography about her experiences throughout her life. “Years from now it would be cool to write a book about all the crazy stuff and the insane things I’ve gotten to do. My life moves so fast, I have to write it all down, otherwise I can’t remember where I was yesterday. I will write my biography for sure.”

9. Fear of TattoosPerhaps it’s because she reads so much and her favorite quotes change so often that gives her a fear of the permanence of tattoos. She says she couldn’t possibly commit to just one saying or symbol for the rest of her life but if she did it would likely be the “13” she’s been known to draw on her hand for live shows. It’s her lucky number after all.

10. Nearly BlindIt may come as a surprise after reading how how active she was in horse riding and how much she loves to read that Taylor is nearly blind. She wears contacts instead of her prescription glasses usually but thats because she hates her glasses so much, but thats on her. “So I have these huge glasses that I wear that are the ugliest pair of glasses you’ll ever see in your life,” she told Just Jared. “But they were the ones in the glasses store that no one was going to buy. They were in the corner, they’re all dusty. I’m like, ‘no one is going to buy those, and they’re so ugly.’ So I had to buy them.” Ironically, the large glasses she wears in a couple of her videos are not her own glasses as some fans thought.

Bonus 1: InfluencesEveryone seems to know that Taylor Swift is a devotee of Britney Spears, but she has more influences than that. She’s said it was a LeAnn Rimes concert which convinced her to move to Nashville at a young age to begin her music career. She also lists Faith Hill, Shania Twain, and the Dixie Chicks as important influences. Likewise, she learned to make a statement with her music from the likes of Natalie Maines and company. When it comes to fashion inspiration, its no short list either including Francoise Hardy, Jane Birkin, Audrey Hepburn, and Brigitte Bardot which explains her signature retro 30’s style, red lipstick and thick mascara.

Bonus 2: Number of AwardsTo date in 2016, Taylor Swift has been nominated for 572 awards and has won a total of 275 awards including Grammys, American Music Awards, Country Music Awards, and two Golden Globe nominations. She is the second person, and first woman, to receive the Country Music Association’s Pinnacle Award. And she made country music history by selling more digital downloads than any other county artist ever; 20 million hits worldwide. She is also the only artist in the history of music to have an album hit 1 million 1st Week sales figure three times with Speak Now (2010), Red (2012), and 1989 (2014).